Bert O. States, in "Hamlet" and the Concept of Character ( Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins UP, 1992), demonstrates that the speech about the "fat
weed" and "Lethe wharf" is a "perfect description of the phlegmatic
[slothful] condition" (75-76).

William C. Carroll, in "'The Base Shall Top Th'Legitimate': The Bedlam
Beggar and the Role of Edgar in King Lear," Shakespeare Quarterly 38
( 1987): 426-41, esp. 431-34, shows from contemporary accounts that
Jacobeans generally regarded the bedlam beggar as the fictitious persona of a charlatan, who deserved whipping rather than charity.

Evocative descriptions of opposed Roman and Egyptian values appear
in Robert Ornstein, "The Ethic of the Imagination: Love and Art in
Antony and Cleopatra," Later Shakespeare, ed.
John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 8 ( London: Edward
Arnold, 1966) 31-46, esp. 36-38; and in Julian Markels, The Pillar of the
World. "Antony and Cleopatra" in Shakespeare's Development ( Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1968) 36-48.

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